Correct evaluation of relevant SDGs and their impact on expansion of capabilities will act as an authentic assessment which can be of multiple use. These will show, inter alia, if various State Governments are working in tandem with the Union Government to achieve national implementation of SDGs

Many people wanted to feel that some good would come out of the horror, that we would as a species somehow learn virtuous lessons and emerge from the cocoon of the lockdown as splendid New Age butterflies and create kinder, gentler, less greedy, more ecologically wise, less racist, less capitalist, more inclusive societies. This seemed to me, still seems to me, like Utopian thinking….The world’s power structures and their beneficiaries would not easily surrender to a new idealism.

— Salman Rushdie in Languages of Truth

As a man’s life and some of the anecdotes in his life are yoked forever, here is one from me. In April 2022, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, invited me to give a speech on “The Impact of Books on my Life”. A few days later, I was discussing the event with a gentleman, who, on being told, given my inclination towards abnormal psychology, of two of a few selected books: Vladimir Nabokov’s “Insomniac Dreams” and Carl Jung’s “Essays on Contemporary Events”, with his somber and sane look described these “as knotty and anfractuous and such books cannot influence a normal person’s life”.

While I looked aghast at the length and breadth of his judgmental indulgence, he advised me to read simple African poetry. Forthright as I know him, my search for African poetry led me to a poetry anthology where I found a poem titled “Growing Up” by a young, woman poet from Namibia, Julia Amukoshi. Her simple, innocent rural voice and sonorous honesty in her depiction are catchy: “Dust used to be my natural make-up and the wind my professional hair stylist/Water and I were enemies/I dripped with sweat after playing, and running around was my best friend/I never understood why my natural scent was so resented/But oh well! Eventually, I found myself growing up.”

Her lines lament natural resources deprivation and environmental degradation. While one may keep exploring sequestered ramifications of the gentleman’s observations “knotty, anfractuous... normal person”, certainly such anecdotes have attributes to set the ball rolling. Onto the principal theme.

An attempt is made here to ruminate over the concepts of quality of life, its ingredients and possible inclusion of natural resources as one of the major indices influencing quality of life. Let us peep briefly into the last four decades with a view to see the evolution of these concepts. At the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), Helsinki, in July 1988, Professors Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen organised a conference to deliberate upon issues like what is meant by “quality of life”, and the requirements in terms of social policy for improving it. Economists use a crude measure of per capita income as indicative of human welfare. This approach suffers criticism in as much as this single measure is insufficient and there is a need to assess a number of distinct areas of human life in determining how well people are doing. The conference in Helsinki suggested, inter alia, that we should instead measure people’s capabilities, that is, whatever they are able to do and that too in different areas of life. That was an important way of encouraging debate on the issue of improving quality of life with a view to pep up awareness among stakeholders.

It is unfortunate that economic growth models we rely on while framing our beliefs about economic prospects or otherwise miserably fail to recognise our dependence on nature. Quality of life and natural resources are incontrovertibly correlated. For instance, restoring a degraded woodland adds to the quality of life or less polluted air quality or removal of heaps of garbage adds charm to quality of life. The significance of this correlation did not dawn upon the organisers at Helsinki. That was to happen later in terms of what came to culminate into Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Some exploration into the realm of theory will do no harm. Rather it will facilitate quick and correct absorption of pragmatic problems. A must to get to solutions fast.

When we think of the quality of life of a nation or people, we come across questions involving, inter alia, the distribution of available resources and how they affect people’s lives. One has to know about indices like life expectancy, health care, medical services, education: nature and quality both. A basket of health services may be perfectly suitable for a thirty-year-old young person, while it may be totally unsuitable for a seventy-year-old person. Though goods and services are essential for expansion of capabilities of people, their value rests on what people can do with these.

Let us reflect on the complex decisions public policy must make, for example, concerning health, and the distribution of the goods connected with health. The assessment of women’s quality of life is an important area in the developing world. As a lifetime of deprivation and lack of education can play havoc with women’s desires: restricted and limited, one usually observes a very large gap in a woman’s actual ability to function in a variety of ways.

In economic literature, there has been increasing acceptance about a person’s life as a combination of various doings and beings, generically called functioning. Adequate nourishment and being disease-free are elementary matters for a person while others may be more complex, such as having self-respect, preserving human dignity, taking part in the life of the community, and so on. Yet another term economists use is “capability” of a person which refers to the various alternative combinations of functioning, any one of which the person can prefer to have. In this sense, the capability of a person corresponds to the freedom of choice as regards leading one kind of life or another. This is a sophisticated and all-encompassing definition of quality of life which ultimately implies expansion of human capabilities.

However in all discussions about quality of life, nature has all along remained external. Economic models of development have excluded the crucial role natural resources occupy in the economy. Of late, economists have started providing new perspectives on the role of natural resources in the economy. For example it is commonly accepted that growing urbanisation accompanying economic growth has created a distance between people and the natural world. Economists identify three categories of assets that can be called capital goods: produced capital, human capital and natural capital. Nature is now treated as an asset with a rider that assets are renewable such as fisheries (self-regenerative) or non-renewable (fossil fuels, minerals). The sum of the accounting values of a society’s capital goods is known as inclusive wealth. By wealth we mean not only the accounting price of produced capital and human capital, but also of natural capital. Thus the study of the class of assets called Nature and its relation to the other assets like produced capital and human capital has merited serious attention in the recent past. SDGs (2015) harp on this novel approach which is clear from identified seventeen goals: No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduce inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace, justice and strong institutions and partnership for the goals. We get a combined glimpse of produced capital, human capital and natural capital in these goals.

In India, SDGs are fulfilled by the State Governments through their own budget or by way of transfer of funds by Government of India as grants-in-aid and or directly to the executing agencies, for implementation of Central schemes etc, executed by the State machinery.

As we intend to discuss about evaluation of relevant SDGs having a bearing on natural resources and environment and its contribution to quality of life, various financial statements of State Governments can be useful in working out financial achievements under relevant SDGs having a bearing on natural resources through the exercise of mapping which in turn necessitates a clear understanding of SDGs dealing with environment and natural resources. Mapping will help in determining budgetary allocations and expenditure incurred against these which can be attributed to goals pertaining to environment and natural resources. Thus the role various State Governments discharge in building natural capital and its contribution to quality of life can be fathomed.

Various agencies, institutions, economists, social scientists, policy analysts, and the ilk having the task of carrying out appraisals and impact analysis have a pivotal role to play not only in evaluating quality of life owing to investments made in a given period but now, in view of shift towards natural resource accounting, more importantly in estimating the contribution of budgetary allocations towards and expenditure incurred on relevant goals to enhancement or diminution of quality of life.

It will involve in-depth evaluation and impact analysis of both budgetary allocations and expenditure incurred following a well-proven mechanism of appraisals and evaluation. Fundamental strategy should aim at making forays into relationship of money spent, its impact on natural resources related SDGs and finally the impact of both on quality of life keeping in view goal indicators and targets. Counterfactuals as used in economics can lend a helping hand too if used prudently and logically. 

It is a fact that the contribution of different SDGs to expansion of capabilities may vary gigantically with a number of parameters: social relations, sex, education, class background, natural disasters and a variety of other interrelated factors, for example, labour power is the only endowment for a landless labourer whose fortunes are determined by working of labour markets or Covid-19 like situation causing what Christopher Bliss calls, “flight” as contrasted with migration. (Those interested in this distinction may refer to my essay “Covid plight: Opportunity for rebirth of humanity” published in my book The Descent: Essays and Critiques). Yet one cannot remain oblivious of an important aspect. While, if we treat natural resources as a form of public good, what will be more important to know is ownership of improved supply rather than total improved supply as a consequence of investments in SDGs. Complexities apart, one can think of a few likely outcomes. Degradation of natural resources rural population face increases time needed for their daily household production. Delay in obtaining drinking water owing to acute water scarcity adversely affects daily wages.

Money spent has failed to address the quality and sustainability of water resources. Expenditure under SDGs has helped reduce the contribution of contributing factors to over exploitation of natural resources. There is reduction in human induced changes in climate resulting in less disruption in natural resources. Progress made towards sustainable forest management is not in harmony with money expended. Such an evaluation of relevant SDGs and their impact on expansion of capabilities will act as an authentic assessment which can be of multiple use. These will show, inter alia, if various State Governments are working in tandem with the Union Government to achieve national implementation of SDGs. Most importantly these will have educative/corrective value both nationally and internationally particularly when we are midway our journey towards 2030. These findings will establish how near or how faraway we are from what Rushdie calls “a new idealism”. 

(The writer is a former Additional Deputy CAG, a poet, writer and columnist. His fifth book: The Descent: Essays and Critiques (2010-2021) was released in February 2022. He is a nominated member from the category of ‘Literate person from the public and community’ of Ethics Committee on Research of mental health establishment, IHBAS (Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences), of the Government of NCT of Delhi. Views expressed are personal)